PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - de Leon, Fernanda Leite Lopez
AU  - McQuillin, Ben
TI  - The Role of Conferences on the Pathway to Academic Impact
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.55.1.1116-8387R
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 164--193
VI  - 55
IP  - 1
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/55/1/164.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/55/1/164.full
SO  - J Hum Resour2020 Jan 01; 55
AB  - We provide evidence for the effectiveness of conferences in promoting academic impact by exploiting the cancellation—due to Hurricane Isaac—of the 2012 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting. We assembled a data set of 29,142 papers and quantified conference effects, using difference-in-differences regressions. Within four years of being presented at the conference, a paper’s likelihood of becoming cited increases by five percentage points. We decompose the effects by authorship and provide an account of the underlying mechanisms. Overall, our findings point to the role of short-term face-to-face interactions in the formation and dissemination of scientific knowledge.